“Yes!” shouts the Center for American Progress (CAP), a center-left think tank populated, in part, by former Clinton and Obama administration aides, in an analysis released Thursday.

“No” replies, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB), the bipartisan band of deficit fighters allied with Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of a fiscal-responsibility commission.

For once, this isn’t an argument about which numbers baselines to use. Both sides agree that Congress and the president have done some deficit reduction and it’s showing up in the latest deficit data. Both agree projections for the deficit over the next decade look less frightening than they did a few years ago. “There is good news,” says Maya MacGuineas, director of CFRB.

But one side sees the glass half full; the other half empty. They agree that the across-the-board spending cuts – “the sequester” – are dangerously stupid. They differ, though, on the best way to quicken the pace of U.S. economic growth.

There appears little chance that there will be significant legislation to reduce the deficit this year or next. Republicans won’t go along with the tax increases that Democrats want; Democrats won’t go along with the spending cuts that Republicans want. There is no political or financial market pressure to compromise.

The big questions are what it’ll take to get the debt ceiling lifted later this year and what, if anything, will be done to replace or ease the constraints of the sequester for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The argument among think tanks and wonks is about not what will happen but what should.

- Since the Bowles-Simpson panel reported in late 2010, Congress and President Barack Obama have enacted significant deficit reduction already by imposing caps on annually appropriated spending and raising taxes.

- Projections for health-care cost growth, the major driver of deficits, are significantly slower than they had been.

- The Congressional Budget Office — which circulated some frightening projections of debt rising to 100% of gross domestic product by 2023 — now projects the ratio at around 75% in that year, about where it is now. We can relax.

- The odds of a big deal to reduce deficits for a decade or more are nil in the current political environment. A smaller, short-term term deal is about the best that can be hoped for.

Reuters

- Congress and the president should replace the sequester for the next three years with a combination of tax increases and money-saving changes to Medicare and farm subsidies, and allocate $70 billion for infrastructure and early childhood education to help improve the economy’s growth rate, the truly pressing problem. Deal with everything else later.

“We’ve done pretty well at deficit reduction, not so well at growth,” says CAP’s president, Neera Tanden. It’s time to do less of the first and more of the second. She and Mr. Linden insist that they’re not suggesting that the U.S. doesn’t need to reduce its deficit in the long-term, just that it’s politically impossible to deal with it now and there’s no economic imperative to do so.

Over at the CRFB, Ms. MacGuineas disagrees: “There’s absolutely no benefit in delaying making the choices of how to get the long-term issues under control,” she says.

“The sooner we put those in place, the more gradually we can phase them in, the more time we have to adjust. We’d also get the immediate boost of stability, of knowing how these changes will be made, which will help the economy today.”

- The level of debt as a percentage of GDP has come down, but the trajectory is still uncomfortable: It falls for a few years but then begins to rise again around 2018. This is not a time for complacency.

- Replacing the sequester is a good idea, but it’s not enough. The objective isn’t to stabilize debt/GDP at current level but put it on a downward path.

- Waiting just makes the eventual lift — the size of the changes to benefits and taxes — harder, especially given the widespread desire to phase changes in slowly and spare those over 55 years old from the belt-tightening.

- Yesterday’s revenue and spending projections may have been too gloomy; today’s may be too rosy. Counting on the optimistic ones – and counting on Congress and the president not to find reason to spend a little or a lot more – is imprudent.

- Enacting money-saving changes to benefit programs today along with some tax increases that take effect in a few years will make today’s economy stronger.

“The reasons to delay are political and reflect a desire to sweep the hard choices under the carpet,” Ms. MacGuineas says.

For critical perspectives on politics and the economy from Jerry Seib & David Wessel, visit Seib & Wessel.

About Washington Wire

Washington Wire is one of the oldest standing features in American journalism. Since the Wire launched on Sept. 20, 1940, the Journal has offered readers an informal look at the capital. Now online, the Wire provides a succession of glimpses at what’s happening behind hot stories and warnings of what to watch for in the days ahead. The Wire is led by Reid J. Epstein, with contributions from the rest of the bureau. Washington Wire now also includes Think Tank, our home for outside analysis from policy and political thinkers.